Bing

General
July 19, 2010
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Foursquare looking to ink search partnership

By on July 19, 2010 at 7:35 AM.

Foursquare looking to ink search partnership

Foursquare Logo

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley did not mince words when speaking with the U.K. paper The Telegraph. Crowley said, “Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search,” and went on to note that they were in talks with all the major search players including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. “We can anonymise data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment,” the co-founder said.  ”Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to – and where is trending – not what.” It all sounds good to us, what about you? Do you 4sq? More →

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Services
July 7, 2010
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Twitter handling 24 billion search queries per month

By on July 7, 2010 at 8:50 PM.

Twitter handling 24 billion search queries per month

Twitter Search Bar

Twenty four billion. That is how many times users are searching Twitter per month; a truly gargantuan figure. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone noted that twitter.com now handles roughly 800 million search queries per day, a 33% increase from April of this year. To put that number in perspective, Yahoo! handles roughly 9.4 billion search queries per month, while Bing handles around 4.1 billion. Almost makes you a bit more tolerant of the fail whale, now doesn’t it.

[Via Reddit] More →

19 Comments
General
June 28, 2010
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Verizon enters the Galaxy S fray with the Fascinate, U.S. Cellular tags along

By on June 28, 2010 at 1:02 AM.

Verizon enters the Galaxy S fray with the Fascinate, U.S. Cellular tags along

Galaxy-S-GT-I9000

AT&T has the Captivate, T-Mobile has the Vibrant, and now Verizon Wireless has the Fascinate, it’s very own iteration of the Samsung Galaxy S. Featuring the same 4″ WVGA Super AMOLED display, 5 megapixel camera and 1GHz Hummingbird processor as its siblings, the Fascinate also has a six-axis motion control for an enhanced gaming experience, Swype virtual keyboard, and comes pre-loaded with Bing Search and Bing Maps. U.S. Cellular also announced that it will be jumping on the Galaxy S bandwagon, although what its model will be named and what most of its tailor-made features will be are still a mystery. Then again, so are its price and release date. All we know is that it, just like the Fascinate, will be available this Fall. More →

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General
June 16, 2010
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Amazon looking to partner with Bing to provide shopping results

By on June 16, 2010 at 7:08 PM.

Amazon looking to partner with Bing to provide shopping results

Bing Amazon

The Business Insider has a source who claims that Amazon is in talks with Microsoft to be the partnered provider of shopping search results for Bing. The move comes after Microsoft announced they would shut down their “Cash Back” program on July 30th. The deal, as TBI puts it would give Amazon ownership of “the shopping results that are served up from Microsoft’s Bing search engine;” presumably, they would provide the top hits in the Shopping tab. No word on the monetary terms or timeline of the proposed deal. More →

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mobile
May 28, 2010
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Rumor: Bing to be default search provider in iPhone OS 4?

By on May 28, 2010 at 9:02 PM.

Rumor: Bing to be default search provider in iPhone OS 4?

Bing Search iPhone

TechCrunch is citing a “reliable source” who claims that Bing will be getting the nod as iPhone OS 4′s default search engine once the finalized code is pushed out to the masses. Search rival Google has been the default iPhone search provider since its inception in 2006; an honor for which Google allegedly pays close to $100 million a year. Mobile search is becoming huge business and as the Android platform juggernaut continues to chug along — with Google search in tow — alternate search providers like Microsoft and Yahoo! are looking for mobile delivery vehicles. What do you think iPhone owners? Loyal to Google or will you give Bing a shot? More →

81 Comments
Services
May 12, 2010
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Bing for Windows Mobile updated to support turn-by-turn navigation

By on May 12, 2010 at 12:45 AM.

Bing for Windows Mobile updated to support turn-by-turn navigation

bing-nav-winmo

Microsoft threw its Windows Mobile faithful a bit of bone today by updating its Bing application with free turn-by-turn navigation. When using Bing to find directions, a new “navigate” button will allow users to navigate to their destination using voice prompts. The navigation is (obviously) powered by Bing Maps, while the voice components are provided by Microsoft’s Tellme technology. The feature is said to be available for all Windows Mobile 6.x devices on Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T. Verizon Wireless was not listed amongst the compatible carriers, but seeing how the Omina II was mentioned as a compatible device we think it might be possible to get the nav feature —  but not the voice prompts — to work on Big Red. Point your Windows Phone to m.bing.com and let us know what you think. More →

21 Comments
General
May 5, 2010
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Google gets its Bing on with site redesign

By on May 5, 2010 at 6:35 PM.

Google gets its Bing on with site redesign

google-redesign

If you logged into Google yesterday and thought for a brief moment you had been redirected to Bing, that’s because Google’s brand new search engine refresh has seriously cramped Microsoft’s style. In all seriousness and to be completely fair to Google, this design has been in beta for quite some time, but that doesn’t change the fact it’s almost a spitting image of Bing…minus the kooky backgrounds. On the left-hand side of the site you’ll now find the search tools which will help you narrow down your results from everything from a general query to specifics such as news articles, blog posts, images and more. It’s definitely one of those things you need to see to fully appreciate, so hit up the jump, check out the video and let us know your thoughts.

P.S. Google’s mobile search page has been reworked in a similar fashion.

More →

29 Comments
Software
March 11, 2010
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Motorola to ditch Google and use Bing search and maps in China

By on March 11, 2010 at 8:01 AM.

Motorola to ditch Google and use Bing search and maps in China

motobingIt’s no secret that Google and China aren’t exactly BFFs at the moment, but now Motorola has thrown its hat into the foray in a rather large way in order to protect its own interests and presumably make a nice bit of coin while doing so. As of this quarter, all of Motorola’s Android smartphones sold in China will see Google search and Google Maps replaced by Bing search and Bing Maps. Devices currently in the hands of consumers or sitting unsold on store shelves will be getting an OTA update sometime in the not too distant future. Both Motorola and Microsoft have not announced any specific plans to expand on their partnership outside of China — one could argue it’s already in the US — but based upon our understanding of the term “global alliance”, we don’t doubt for a second that this partnership will be forced upon other markets. More →

43 Comments
General
March 10, 2010
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February search engine market share number are in, more of the same

By on March 10, 2010 at 3:09 PM.

February search engine market share number are in, more of the same

Feb Seach Engine Market Share

Today, ComScore released its search engine market share numbers for February 2010, and to be honest, there wasn’t much movement. Google and Bing both gained a little ground: Google’s market share rose 0.1 percentage point from 65.4% to 65.5% while Bing’s share gained 0.2% rising from 11.3% to 11.5%. Yahoo and Ask both gave up a little bit of the search pie: Yahoo declined from 17% to 16.8% and Ask fell slightly from 3.8% to 3.7% market share.  AOL’s slice of search remained unchanged at around 2.5%. We’ve got the full report, and all the insipid details that go with it, linked up for you.  More →

47 Comments
General
December 17, 2009
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Verizon Wireless pushing Bing as the only search option?

By on December 17, 2009 at 7:26 PM.

Verizon Wireless pushing Bing as the only search option?

Bing-BlackBerry-Options

Surely you don’t think RIM has that kind of control over their own smartphones (they bend over backwards for their carrier partners). That leaves us to assume that Verizon Wireless has struck a deal with Microsoft’s Bing search engine to be the search engine of choice on their BlackBerry products. That’s fine and dandy (get that money, boo boo), but what’s really upsetting to most users is that there isn’t an option to change to another provider. No, we’re not kidding, you can not switch to Google or Wikipedia like you used to be able to.

We’ve reached out to Verizon and are waiting to hear back. In the meantime, what do you guys think?

UPDATE: Verizon Wireless told us, “The default to our BlackBerry devices is now bing!” and that if you’d like to use another search provider, you can “go to web – bookmark, make favorite, download. Also – you can to Appworld and download Google quicksearch client for free and move it from the Downloads folder to have a link on the home screen.”

149 Comments
General
November 17, 2009
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Bing U.S. market share approches 10%

By on November 17, 2009 at 12:01 PM.

Bing U.S. market share approches 10%

bing.com screen shot

We have some news coming out of the world of those new-fangled “search engines” that are so popular with the kids; it looks like Microsoft’s re-branded search product’s market share is creeping up on double digits in the U.S., currently sitting at 9.9% for September of 2009. Bing’s share of internet spelunking is up 1.4% for the year and 0.5% in September alone, compare that with -3% on the year for Yahoo! and +2.4% for Google. Not too shabby, considering bing.com was just launched on May 28th of this year. Here at BGR we are pretty loyal Googler’s, what about you? Any die hard, uh, Binger’s out there? More →

90 Comments
News
July 29, 2009
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Microsoft and Yahoo ink search deal

By on July 29, 2009 at 12:57 PM.

Microsoft and Yahoo ink search deal

Microsoft and Yahoo fiiiiiiiiiiinally announced a search partnership this morning, bringing to an end months of endless rumors and speculation. The deal will provide Microsoft with a 10-year license to use Yahoo’s core search technologies and integrate Yahoo’s platform into Microsoft’s current search offering, Bing. Yahoo will focus on the advertising and will be the “exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers”. The partnership is subject regulatory review, a process that is expected to be completed in early 2010. Our favorite aspect of the deal is how much it has deteriorated — Microsoft first offered to buy Yahoo for over $40 billion back in February of last year, and then offered $1 billion for Yahoo’s search business a few months ago. Carol Bartz said at that point in time that it would take “boatloads of cash” for the two to work out a deal. Fast forward to today, and Yahoo gets a big fat goose egg up front. Awesome. The deal, by the way, was signed by both Bartz and Ballmer with a big purple pen. No, seriously.

Read

9 Comments
Services
June 3, 2009
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Microsoft's Bing mobile site now live

By on June 3, 2009 at 7:33 AM.

Microsoft's Bing mobile site now live

We’re not sure if Microsoft plans to get as deep into the mobile website business as Google but as of yesterday, the company’s new Bing mobile site is alive and ready for action. Bing, for those who took a long weekend, is Microsoft’s new search engine; a reincarnation of Microsoft Live Search that is infinitely more usable. Since its launch yesterday in preview form, Bing has definitely received a fair amount of acclaim from around the blogosphere and preliminary user feedback is pretty positive as well. In the short time we’ve tested the site so far, Bing mobile is no different. The site is nice and spry, results pages are laid out well with web, image, news and local breakdowns one click away, and Bing will format linked pages for your phone if you so choose — just like Google. Truth be told, we like Microsoft’s mobile formatting much, much better than Google’s so far. If you’re looking for a great new mobile search option, definitely check out m.bing.com from your handset.

Thanks, Rich!

18 Comments